Living with kidney disease, dialysis, and eventually transplant while also making memories of the greatest dad in the whole wide world and the marvelous adventures of two of the greatest sons in the whole wide world.

8.21.2009

To School We Go, Giggidty Gig

I just passed a co-worker who is leaving early to plan for Back to School Shopping for the Kids.

I remember those days. For my parents, it had to be pretty bad – four kids, 6, 8, 10, and 12 – shopping for clothes. I could almost hear my Dad’s wallet squeak painfully.

Then with my boys – we combined our visit to the grandparents on the coast with school clothes shopping. Partly because my Dad by this time had a fuller wallet and he would “help” me buy clothes and shoes.

For many years, the boys were the same size and it made it pretty easy to shop. I had convinced them by the time they were in 1st and 2nd grade that everyone, all siblings, all over the world, wore each other’s clothes. There were no personal, this-is-mine clothes, except for shoes. Everything got washed together. Everything got folded together. Everything got worn together. I suppose that is why, when one day we were frantically tearing their bedroom apart looking for matching socks, that they finally gave up and wore mismatching socks. Both boys were wearing one brown sock and one green sock.

And boys are SOOO much easier than girls. I had only one incident (at Walmart) that both boys were stubbornly adamant that they would NOT be caught dead in jeans with yellow thread (I think they were Wranglers). It was “lame” and they weren’t going to do it. They’d go to school naked if I bought jeans with yellow thread.

So – here’s my sympathy to all you parents going shopping this weekend for school clothes.

But – look at it this way – it also means that you are going to be FREE during the day for the next nine months. Hallelujah!